We don’t have to consult anyone other than each other, no matter how big the decision is

No one can tell us what to do on a day to day basis, or any macro level

No individual customer is big enough to hold sway over us

We never have to compromise our beliefs to earn money – ever

We can never be fired

We can never be replaced

We can never be forced to sell

We can never be forced to hire someone we don’t like

Until you’ve experienced it first-hand, you can’t understand just how radical this freedom & security is. I sure didn’t.

It’s easy to fail to take advantage of this radical freedom, due to anxiety or fear. I know because not only have I seen my friends fail this way, I failed this way too.

For a while, we didn’t take good advantage of the freedoms it provides (except for our yearly month-long vacation). But we learned.

We set vacation goals. (Our goal: work semi-regular 4-day weeks, 8 hours or less a day, take fully 3 months of vacation a year.)

We just decided to take low six figures out of the business to buy a house, after a couple years of minimizing our personal draws in the interest of growth.

We’ve learned & are learning to outsource this and that.

We started to grow by adding employees, but we realized it wasn’t right for us, and we stopped, & took it back to being just us + freelancers. We are hiring contractors & forging partnerships to grow the way in a way that makes us happy.

If tomorrow, we decided we don’t want to, for example, bust our butts to get Charm out the door (finally), we don’t have to. We can shut it down. There are no consequences. We put only our own money into it. We are free to do as we please.

And simply having that power, that freedom, means that we won’t feel like we have to kill it.

It’s amazing how many of our desperate desires are in reaction to things we feel required to do. What a difference it makes when you realize you don’t have to.

Sure, it took a lot of hard work…for a year or two. But because we made smart choices, and used our effort wisely, here we are. As long as we don’t completely sit on our butts, we’re set.

I can’t express how amazing that feels.

But as long as I can write, I’ll keep trying to spread the message.

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